oration and repentance."

Ferdinand Ramero's steel eyes were fixed like the eyes of a snake on the
holy man's face. Restoration and repentance do not belong behind eyes
like that.

"I can fight you in the courts. You and your Church may go to the
devil;" he seemed to hiss rather than to speak these words.

"We do go to him every day to bring back souls like yours," Father
Josef's voice was calm. "I have waited a long time for you to repent.
You can go to the courts, but you will not do it. For the sake of your
wife, Gloria Ramero, and Felix Narveo, her brother, we do not move
against you, and you dare not move for yourself, because your own record
will not bear the light of legal investigation."

Ferdinand Ramero sprang up, the blaze of passion, uncontrolled through
all his years, bursting forth in the tragedy of the hour. Eloise was
right. In his anger he was a maniac.

"You dare to threaten me! You pen me in a corner to stab me to death!
You hold disgrace and miserable poverty over my head, and cant of
restoration and repentance! Not until here you name each thing that you
count against me, and I have met them point by point, will I restore. I
never will repent!"

In the vehemence of anger, Ramero was the embodiment of the dramatic
force of unrestraint, and withal he was handsome, with a controlling
magnetism even in his hour of downfall.

Jondo had said that Father Josef had somewhere back a strain of Indian
blood in his veins. It must have been this that gave the fiber of self
control to his countenance as he looked with pitying eyes at Jondo and
Eloise St. Vrain.

"The hour is struck," he said, sadly. "And you shall hear your record,
point by point, because you ask it now. First: you have retained,
controlled, misused, and at last embezzled the fortune of Theron St.
Vrain, as it was retained, controlled, misused, and embezzled by your
father, Henry Ramer, in his lifetime. Any case in civil courts must show
how the heritage of Eloise St. Vrain, heir to Theron St. Vrain at the
death of her mother--"

"Not until the death of her mother--" Ferdinand Ramero broke in,
hoarsely.

For the first time to-day the priest's cheek paled, but his voice was
unbroken as he continued:

"I would have been kinder for your own sake. You desire otherwise. Yes,
only after the death of Mary Marchland St. Vrain could you dictate
concerning her daughter's affairs, with most questionable legality even
then. Mary Marchland St.